Éowyn's Cheer, Aragorn's Bane, Gandalf's Fault
by Omnicat
Summary: They're off to Helm's Deep. Éowyn is cheery, Aragorn is liable to be torn to shreds, Gandalf is conveniently absent, and Éomer and Merry somehow ended up among the lot of them. Do note the genre of this fic.


**Title:** Éowyn's Cheer, Aragorn's Bane, Gandalf's Fault

**Author:** Omnicat v''v

**Rating:** K+

**Genre:** Humor, bordering on Parody.

**Spoilers & desirable foreknowledge:** The movies and the books, preferably. Though I must admit that I hadn't read the books in five years when I wrote this, so the movies will do, largely.

**Warnings:** Extreme silliness and rather lame humour. Innuendo. Misinformation concerning certain... things. Abuse of ye Olde English.

**Pairings:** Implications only, nothing is shown.

**Soundtrack:** 'Because I got high' by Afroman.

**Disclaimer:** Tolkien would most likely turn in his grave if he saw what I was doing to his creations... Let's _not_ hold a séance, okay? I'd rather not have a linguist haunting my attic. I'd never be able to sleep without dreaming in Phrases and Quotes again!

**Summary:** They're off to Helm's Deep. Éowyn is cheery, Aragorn is liable to be torn to shreds, Gandalf is conveniently absent, and Éomer and Merry somehow ended up among the lot of them. Do note the genre of this fic.

**Author's Note:** I did not take writing this seriously (I would never have put Éomer or Merry in here if I had been my normal, canon-retentive self), so my advice for reading it is simple; don't take that seriously either.

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**Éowyn's Cheer, Aragorn's Bane, Gandalf's Fault**

Night had fallen, and the refugees from Edoras were resting. Scouts were posted all around the encampment to keep a look out for enemy forces, so that the rest of the wary people could sleep somewhat peacefully and restore their strength. In between the tents, fires were crackling cosily, giving the situation an almost camping-trip-like charm.

Théoden, the newly recovered King of Rohan, sat around one of the fires and ate a meal of stew (brewed by one of his captains, not his niece) with Éomer his kinsman and heir, Legolas of Mirkwood, Gimli son of Gloin and the Halfling Meriadoc Brandybuck. Somewhere in the flickering shadows of night, a woman's laughter could be heard, clear and merry.

"It warms my heart to once more hear Éowyn laugh." said Théoden.

"Indeed." agreed Éomer. "She has been silent and cold for too long. The coming of Gandalf and Aragorn has healed more than one soul."

"As long as she doesn't expect me to eat her stew, I'm all for it." Gimli munched on his food even while he spoke. "Your sister has a wicked sense of humor, Éomer. And exquisite taste, too. Though no taste _buds_, I dare say." The dwarf was the only one to laugh about his joke.

Luckily for Gimli, he was saved from loss of face in front of the most important men in the country when the object of the conversation suddenly appeared and plopped down between her uncle and brother, giggling girlishly. Swaying back and forth slightly, she grinned around at the Men - and Dwarf, Elf and Halfling - around the fire and waved.

"Hi!" The sound of her own voice made her giggle hysterically.

Éomer and Théoden looked at each other with eyes wide. The Elf, Dwarf and Halfling exchanged glances, eyebrows raised high.

"Éowyn, my dear." Théoden greeted her, trying with all his might to sound normal. "How are you?"

"Ooohh, I'm great!" she said excitedly. She bounced up and down and threw her arms around the King's neck, cooing. "I'm sooooooo glad you asked, uncle."

"Y - you are?" Théoden stuttered, utterly baffled by his niece's sudden change in behaviour. He was glad to see her happy again, but this was a little extreme.

"Yeeeees!" The blond woman held him at an arm's length and peered at him with wide, slightly crazed eyes. "Uuuuncle, I have something to teeeeeelllll you." she whispered, so loud Legolas, Gimli and Merry could hear every extra 'l' in 'tell'.

"What _happened_ to you?" said Merry, hardly able to believe that this woman, who was crooning and giggling and swaying from side to side and making strange faces, was the same Éowyn whom he had seen before. Much to his dismay, his exclamation drew her attention, and her wide blue eyes blinked at him, trying and failing to focus on his face. She seemed to notice this inability and giggled and leered suggestively in his general vicinity - though it could also have been her own nose she was aiming her gaze at.

"I got to play with Aragorn's pipe!"

A horrified silence fell as the symbol-oriented men around the fire deciphered that otherwise nonsensical statement, only broken by the background noises, which, unlike in Tolkien's epic writing, did not have the theatrical inclination to die away at the appropriate moment. I tell you, modern day effects have no sense of drama.

But within moments it did not matter anymore, as the two Rohirrim lords let out bloodcurdling roars and jumped up simultaneously, bellowing: "I WILL KILL HIM!"

Legolas and Gimli exchanged horrified glances and scrambled up. With only the survival of the man on whose shoulders rested half of the fate of the world on their minds, they tossed common sense aside and went after Éomer and Théoden, intent on stopping them from tearing their friend to bloody shreds. If they had taken a moment to think about it, they would have realised that leaving Éowyn alone with Merry was either the stupidest thing they could have done, or an action that would work out just fine. In the nick of time, Legolas managed to get Éomer in a Heimlich-like grip that should rightly have no name in Middle-Earth, and Gimli got a hold on Théoden's shins, whereupon the King of Rohan hit the durt in a decidedly undignified way.

However, it seemed that they had been too late still. Aragorn, son of Arathorn, descendant of Elendil and Isildur, lay sprawled out in the grass between the tents of Rohan, next to a small fire that was slowly dying out due to lack of care from it's builder. From the bowls filled with crushed athelas and the foot- and buttock-prints around the fire, Legolas concluded that Aragorn had seemingly heard of that nasty rumour about 'the healing hands of the King' and had decided to teach as much of the Rohirrim as he could snare how to use the kingsfoil plant, so that he would not have to spend all his time healing peasants' diseases and soldiers' wounds while he still had a war to win, but that said Rohirrim had left discreetly when lady Éowyn had shown up. He was also quite proud that his superior intellect had been the reason that he be chosen to explain away this plot-hole, though he conveniently forgot to notice that it would not have mattered either way if it had stayed or closed, since this is quite close to a crack fic.

"Aragorn!" called Legolas as he struggled to keep his grip on the raging Éomer. "Aragorn!"

The grimy King-to-be(-though-not-if-he-could-help-it) stirred. He curled up on his side and stuck a thumb in his mouth. As the jaws of Legolas and Gimli dropped, he began suckling it peacefully. The Elf and the Dwarf looked to each other for shreds of hope that this could not really be happening, that they were dreaming, that their Author was not this cruel, but found naught. Poor things.

"Aragorn!" shouted Legolas again, soon to be joined by Gimli. "Aragorn! Aragorn!"

"Maybe we're calling him by the wrong name." said Gimli. "He has more than one, right?"

Legolas' eyes brightened. "Yes. Strider! Estel! Ellessar!" He went down a seemingly endless list of names, but none of them served to wake the man who bore them. Legolas was beginning to approach despair.

"Now what?" asked the Elf when he could not think of any more majestic aliases, silly nicknames or vulgar curses he knew to have been ceremoniously granted to, lovingly cooed at or violently thrown towards Aragorn through the years.

Gimli raised an eyebrow and looked at the still struggling Rohirrim men they had been restraining all that time. Legolas merely blinked at him for a moment, but then understanding cleared upon his fair elven face and he made an approving noise as if saying 'Oh, of course. Why didn't I think of that.'

"Which one, though?"

"I say the Horse King. Older, not as much strength left and all that. We still don't want Aragorn dead."

"Well, they are human... Sounds fair enough to me."

The Dwarf nodded, satisfied, and gingerly released his grip on Théoden's shins. The elderly horsemaster jumped up and pounced on Aragorn. The ensuing fight was neither great nor fair, but memorable nonetheless for it's sheer oddity. After some time of grimacing by the Elf and Dwarf and cheering from Éomer, Gimli grabbed Théoden by the scruff again and dragged him away from the twitching Ranger, sustaining several minor injuries himself in the process. He was glad he could at least have _some_ part in the scuffle.

By that time, Aragorn was sitting up with wide eyes, one of which would soon turn black. A longish artefact lay beside him, emitting a thin ribbon of smoke. Legolas' brow creased as he sniffed it. Something was not right about the fumes. Were it not for Aragorn's words, he would have investigated.

"What the Dark Realm, dude?" said the noble Ranger, drawing strange stares from all those around. Éomer and Théoden even regained their senses. It seemed that they finally remembered they were noblemen of Rohan, not wild dogs with rabies. Too bad Aragorn did not experience a similar epiphany. He stood up on wobbly legs, only to fall over again once he tried to take a single step.

"Aragorn?" said Legolas once more, growing a bit concerned about the range of his vocabulary in this fic. Said Man looked at his elven friend blearily, his look eerily similar to that of Éowyn earlier on.

"Aragorn, son of Arathorn!" roared Théoden King in kingly rage. "What in the name of both our forefathers did you think you were doing with my Éowyn?!"

Another silence fell.

"Not like that, you perverts!" Théoden barked.

Coughing all around. Those present turned their eyes to Aragorn again. Aragorn blinked a couple of times, slowly. Then he blinked some more.

"Well?" said Éomer, who was beginning to lose his patience. "Will you explain your dishonourable behaviour with my sister or not, man?"

"Sister?" slurred Aragorn. He blinked some more, swaying to and from. "Sisster... oh, you mean Éowyn? Ah, Éowyynn..." A dopey grin spread on his face.

"Why you -" Legolas grabbed Éomer's cloak as a precaution. "What did you do, you filthy dog?"

"With Éowyn?" asked Aragorn. His brow creased and his eyes narrowed to slits as he thought hard, before his face cleared and he broke out in a wide grin. "I let her smoke my pipe." he quipped.

Before the Rohirrim men could explode, Aragorn picked up the suspiciously smoking object and presented it to them. It was a pipe. Théoden and Éomer felt their ears turn red. Surely they had not just made such a terrible scene over a _literal_ pipe...

"What exactly was in your pipe?" said Legolas, glad to know that he would be granted full sentences still. "The lady Éowyn seemed... not herself, when she came to us after her visit to you."

"Really? I haven't noticed anything about her."

"Why am I not surprised." muttered Gimli.

"Could I see that pipe of yours, Aragorn, my friend?" asked Legolas in the kind tone one uses for very old or very loony people. The Ranger-King nodded enthusiastically and handed Legolas his pipe. Taking it, he sniffed it delicately. Almost immediately, his nose wrinkled in distaste. "My dear friend, I hate to say this, but I am afraid that someone put horse manure in your pipe weed."

"Nah, that weed was given to me by Gandalf. He told me to smoke it when I was feeling gloomy again." Aragorn waggled his eyebrows at nobody in particular. "So I thought, 'Aragorn,' I thought, 'be a good flirt and offer the lady Éowyn some of your weed, for she seems so very gloomy.' That's what I think I thought at least, I think... Ehm..."

At that moment, when the great would-be-King of Men was babbling incoherently and the lords of Rohan were no longer angry but confused and Legolas the Elf and Gimli the Dwarf shared a moment of brotherly bewilderment, Merry decided to make it known that he was there as well and asked: "What'd Gandalf call that weed he gave you again?"

Aragorn's incoherent babbling changed directions, and he started a rather dopey quest into the hazy bowels of his memory. "Something with a 'ch', I think... or a 'k'. Kanba - karna - Cannabis! That's it, cannabis! Very good for glooms and such, Gandalf said."

Four jaws slackened, but Merry only sighed. "Should have known Gandalf didn't smoke the good old Longbottom Leaf. Best leave Strider and the lady Éowyn be for tonight, gentlemen. It would be a shame to ruin their highs."

In the midst of the confusion of Éomer's mind, something Merry had said hit home like a pebble to his helmet, going _'ping!'_. He asked: "Merry, where _is_ Éowyn?"

"Oh, I left her over there -" The Hobbit motioned between the tents, but faltered when he realised that there was no-one by the fire he pointed at. "Well, that's strange."

"Oh dear." said Théoden faintly.

Éowyn's laughter could be heard. And then, the sound of a sword being unsheathed, and Háma's voice, bellowing: "HOW DARE HE DISHONOUR THE LADY OF ROHAN!"

"Oh dear." said Théoden again.

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**PSAN:** I know, I know, it's stupid... Don't tell me you liked it. O.o No, I was kidding, please tell me you liked it. :pleading cutesy kitty eyes:


End file.
